Calls for 20,000 to raise their voices

The US Justice Department has sued Voices in the Wilderness
to try to collect a fine of $20,000 from VitW for bringing medicines to the people of Iraq. Over the past seven years, Voices in the Wilderness has organized more than 65 delegations to Iraq made up of teachers, veterans, social workers, artists, health care professionals, trades people and people of faith. Many of these delegates carried symbolic amounts of medicine as an act of civil disobedience against the injustice of the economic sanctions; they then returned to the United States to tell about the brutalizing effects of the sanctions, magnified by the US bombing of the Iraqi civilian infrastructure during the Gulf War.

Voices in the Wilderness will not pay this fine. All funds received by Voices in the Wilderness were given to us for the purposes of providing humanitarian aid to Iraqi civilians and educating the world community about the deadly effects of the US bombing and embargo of Iraq. The Justice Department is choosing to spend its resources to launch an attack on Voices in the Wilderness at a time when Iraqi people and US soldiers are being killed daily and the US occupying forces have failed to provide for the security and basic humanitarian needs of Iraqi people. Meanwhile, the US has not found any of the Iraqi weapons of mass destruction that supposedly were the reason for the economic sanctions, bombing, and recent military invasion. This lawsuit offers an extraordinary opportunity for people of conscience everywhere to denounce the US Administration for its role in the illegal bombing and invasion of Iraq and for imposing a thirteen-year sanctions regime campaign on Iraq, which contributed to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children and thousands of people.

VitW calls for 20,000 or more citizens of the world to raise their voices in outrage against the injustice and hypocrisy of this lawsuit. Join your voices with ours as we call upon the Justice Department to drop their lawsuit against Voices in the Wilderness and instead direct their money towards the humanitarian efforts of NGOs working in Iraq, the clean-up of the hundreds of tons of depleted uranium now polluting Iraq from US weaponry, and the payment of reparations to the families of Iraqi victims of the US invasion and occupation. You can download a sample letter to Attorney General John Ashcroft which summarizes our legal defense.

You can fax your letter to (202) 307-6777
or mail it to:

Attorney General John Ashcroft
950 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20530.

You can also sign our letter to Attorney General Ashcroft.

See the list of possible actions for other ways to raise your voice. If the Justice Department continues with its plans to prosecute VitW, we will respond with our own indictment of the US government and an international day of nonviolent action and civil disobedience.

VitW also pledges to raise $20,000 in donations for the humanitarian needs of Iraqis. The primary focus of VitW has always been ordinary Iraqi civilians and the most vulnerable of Iraqi society, especially children. Iraqi families living on a few dollars monthly income and surviving on a meager food ration have consistently offered VitW members their very best hospitality when we have visited their country on delegations. We take the petty imposition of this fine by the US administration as a challenge for VitW to return these years of generosity with a pledge of funds for the benefit of our friends in Iraq. Checks made out to Voices in the Wilderness with "20,000 voices" written in the memo line will go directly to NGOs serving the humanitarian needs of Iraqis. We will never use any of your donations to pay US penalties for performing works of mercy.

Please mail checks to
Voices in the Wilderness
5315 N. Clark, PMB #634
Chicago, IL 60640.

In the meantime VitW will work today as we always have, by sending small groups of women and men into Iraq to discover the answer to one question: What is happening in this land of twenty four million people that our government is so anxious for us not to know? It's that simple. We return with information, stories, and photographs to share with others who also are "hungry for the truth." In the summons for a court trial that VitW received on July 29, 2003, the Justice Department stated its "prayer for relief" of the grievances that the Treasury Department has against VitW. In return, we would like to offer our own prayer for relief for the Iraqi people from the inhumanity of US economic and military violence. We pray for conversion in the hearts of the US attorneys, that they will follow their consciences and serve a higher calling than the drums of war and the alarms of mass destruction: the laws of love and human rights and respect for the lives of those whose screams are drowned out by the noise of F-16's, Apache helicopters, smart bombs and government bureaucracy.

In Peace-- Michael Birmingham, Scott Blackburn, Fr. Bob Bossie, SCJ, Caoihme Butterly, John Farrell, Angela Garcia, Ken Hannaford-Ricardi, Laurie Hasbrook, Amy Holcombe Mooney, Kathy Kelly, Ed Kinane, Ramzi Kysia, Safaa Abdel-Magid, Nate Marshall, Karl Meyer, Ceylon Mooney, Bitta Mostofi, Danny Muller, Joe Proulx, Bill Quigley, Chuck Quilty, Milan Rai, Bert Sacks, Stephanie Schaudel, and Tom Walsh.

arch/ive/ief (2000 - 2005)